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Typo posted:so how come even in historical socialist countries people wanted more/better consumer goods and got annoyed that their tv or furniture sucked? People desire things, but not all desire is organic. If it was, marketing wouldn't exist, would it? Are you suggesting that people throughout all of human history were just utterly miserable because they didn't have smartphones? People can be happy with fewer things if they are not constantly told they should want things or living in a society where having things is required for full participation. People before the internet were quite happy not having the internet but now the internet exists and mobile devices exist so now everyone is expected to have and use them and that's how our society works now, and that's heavily influenced by the fact that the internet and mobile computing are extremely profitable. And you probably can't put that cat back in the box, but there are lots of bad things that have happened because of the desire to create consumer products. The US approach to car centric city planning for example, is one of them. That would cost a lot to unfuck, so perhaps it shouldn't have been allowed to develop in the first place?
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Apr 2, 2019 18:23
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OwlFancier posted:People desire things, but not all desire is organic. If it was, marketing wouldn't exist, would it? Are you suggesting that people throughout all of human history were just utterly miserable because they didn't have smartphones? People can be happy with fewer things if they are not constantly told they should want things or living in a society where having things is required for full participation. People before the internet were quite happy not having the internet but now the internet exists and mobile devices exist so now everyone is expected to have and use them and that's how our society works now, and that's heavily influenced by the fact that the internet and mobile computing are extremely profitable. Dude those things are profitable because the internet and those devices are incredibly useful, not the other way around.
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Apr 2, 2019 18:25
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OwlFancier posted:People desire things, but not all desire is organic. If it was, marketing wouldn't exist, would it? Are you suggesting that people throughout all of human history were just utterly miserable because they didn't have smartphones? People can be happy with fewer things if they are not constantly told they should want things or living in a society where having things is required for full participation. People before the internet were quite happy not having the internet but now the internet exists and mobile devices exist so now everyone is expected to have and use them and that's how our society works now, and that's heavily influenced by the fact that the internet and mobile computing are extremely profitable. Not gonna argue with you that TV ads or w/e certainly determines our consumption preferences and yeah makes us buy some stupid poo poo but the existence of the desire that "I worked very hard today, so I expect today to be more prosperous than yesterday, and I hope for a more bountiful tomorrow" was probably true of an ancient farmer just as it is of someone who lives under capitalism, and probably will be true of someone living under socialism no matter how much schools or books tell them they really don't want any more goods or services. And what you are suggesting doesn't seem to be just about banning "needless" (btw, who determines what sort of goods/services are needed?) stuff, but you seem to be actively enforcing a either static or lower level of material consumption from year to year period. I don't see people as being very happy under your system: which has a lot of implications on whether it can remain democratic.
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Apr 2, 2019 18:28
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wateroverfire posted:Dude those things are profitable because the internet and those devices are incredibly useful, not the other way around. No, it's both? A large part of why they are considered useful is because they have commercial utility, that has always been a massive reason for the expansion of the internet. It is as widespread as it is because it was commercialized, and now it powers amazon which runs on cheap labour and individual deliveries rather than bulk transport.
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Apr 2, 2019 18:28
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Typo posted:Not gonna argue with you that TV ads or w/e certainly determines our consumption preferences and yeah makes us buy some stupid poo poo Above a certain level, no, you don't need more stuff? If you have a home, food, community, peace, health, and security in those things, then you can find things to do with your life that aren't consuming more things? There are lots of things you can do that aren't about consuming? But we don't do them today because capitalism doesn't have any use for labour that cannot be commodified. If I had all those things without having to work all the time I'd spend the rest of my time doing something I like? Like going for a walk, maybe learn to play an instrument, learn carpentry, there's lots of stuff I'd like to do that isn't based on just loving collecting more poo poo. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 18:34 on Apr 2, 2019 |
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Apr 2, 2019 18:31
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OwlFancier posted:Above a certain level, no, you don't need more stuff? If you have a home, food, community, peace, health, and security in those things, then you can find things to do with your life that aren't consuming more things? There are lots of things you can do that aren't about consuming? But we don't do them today because capitalism doesn't have any use for labour that cannot be commodified. so who defines what "need" is, and is it illegitimate for anyone to consume more than what they " need" and merely "want"
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Apr 2, 2019 18:33
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Typo posted:so who defines what "need" is, and is it illegitimate for anyone to consume more than what they " need" and merely "want" I would suggest that virtually any suggestion you could come up with involving collective decision making would be better at figuring out what "need" is than "what can we sell to people". I live in the UK, we've got a national health service. When I feel ill I go to the doctor and the doctor looks at me and decides what treatment I need. I get the treatment, I get better. This is the normal way that healthcare works, to me. In the US they have advertisements on the TV that tell you to go and ask your doctor for drugs. Why? Because they sell them to you. Do you need them? Who knows? Just ask for them. Buy them, consume them. Take out insurance and pay tens of thousands of dollars to not have your spine fall out. Make us money. This is perverse. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 18:38 on Apr 2, 2019 |
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Apr 2, 2019 18:35
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OwlFancier posted:No, it's both? A large part of why they are considered useful is because they have commercial utility, that has always been a massive reason for the expansion of the internet. It is as widespread as it is because it was commercialized, and now it powers amazon which runs on cheap labour and individual deliveries rather than bulk transport. Sure. The internet is massively useful to a a huge number of people - for commerce, for spreading information, for all sorts of things. Not only or even primarily for companies that produce mobile computing devices and provide internet service, which is what I took you to mean at first. I don't understand what your point is, though. Commerce is not going to stop under any conceivable political system. The coordination problems solved by the internet would still exist under socialism. If communications advances hadn't have happened and there were no internet or smartphones those problems would be even worse?
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Apr 2, 2019 18:37
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OwlFancier posted:If I had all those things without having to work all the time I'd spend the rest of my time doing something I like? Like going for a walk, maybe learn to play an instrument, learn carpentry, there's lots of stuff I'd like to do that isn't based on just loving collecting more poo poo. Nothing actually stops you from working as little as necessary to satisfy a set of arbitrarily curtailed material needs then using your time for those things if that's what you want to do? Like not to be personal about it but it seems like the problem is internal not external?
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Apr 2, 2019 18:39
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wateroverfire posted:I don't understand what your point is, though. Commerce is not going to stop under any conceivable political system. The coordination problems solved by the internet would still exist under socialism. If communications advances hadn't have happened and there were no internet or smartphones those problems would be even worse? I am suggesting that the coordination problems that the internet solves are commercial ones, primarily. It does not, by design, solve any other kind of problem. It may do so as a side effect but it can also have quite bad side effects in the process of solving commercial problems. It facilitates amazon while externalizing its labour practices and environmental damage. It facilitates facebook and twitter while externalizing the social effects of massive-scale social interaction on an extremely superficial level. It facilitates reddit while externalizing subreddits for child molesters and neo nazis. And sure there's backlash to these but fundamentally the backlash only matters when it threatens the commercial interests that caused the initial problem. My point is that commerce being the sole driver of everything is at best blind and at worst actively harmful to the welfare of humanity at large. wateroverfire posted:Nothing actually stops you from working as little as necessary to satisfy a set of arbitrarily curtailed material needs then using your time for those things if that's what you want to do? Like not to be personal about it but it seems like the problem is internal not external? Yes, nothing stops people from not working. Nothing at all.
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Apr 2, 2019 18:42
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OwlFancier posted:I am suggesting that the coordination problems that the internet solves are commercial ones, primarily. It does not, by design, solve any other kind of problem. It may do so as a side effect but it can also have quite bad side effects in the process of solving commercial problems. It facilitates amazon while externalizing its labour practices and environmental damage. It facilitates facebook and twitter while externalizing the social effects of massive-scale social interaction on an extremely superficial level. It facilitates reddit while externalizing subreddits for child molesters and neo nazis. And sure there's backlash to these but fundamentally the backlash only matters when it threatens the commercial interests that caused the initial problem. That sounds like the opening paragraph of a manifesto, man. I don't really know what I can say in response to that. OwlFancier posted:Yes, nothing stops people from not working. Nothing at all. I was talking about what I assumed you've been talking about - working just enough to buy a bundle of necessities and freeing up some time for other things. But if you're talking about not working at all...in what world would most people just not work at all? That's not a a reasonable expectation unless you're living in the sort of post-scarcity utopia that doesn't exist and can't exist. Under every possible economic system, people still have to work. You would have to work, unless there were some compelling reason you couldn't.
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Apr 2, 2019 18:49
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wateroverfire posted:That sounds like the opening paragraph of a manifesto, man. I don't really know what I can say in response to that. I'm literally a communist, I'm going to sound ideological occasionally. I don't know how much you get paid but "working just enough to buy a bundle of necessities" is generally full time work. Full time, insecure, miserable, stressful work, which you then work to forget about until you have to work it again. Marx called this the alienation of the worker from his labour. Or it's less than full time work combined with trying to consume as little as possible because you can't afford anything. Or it's helping other people to subsist because there aren't enough social services. Life under capitalism is work unless you are privileged enough to be one of the few who are paid a lot of money. If you want to suggest that the reason more people aren't happy and pursuing their dreams is because they're too feckless and aren't willing to take individual responsibility, that's an extremely typical take and also one which is fundamentally unacceptable to a socialist. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 18:57 on Apr 2, 2019 |
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Apr 2, 2019 18:51
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OwlFancier posted:I don't know how much you get paid but "working just enough to buy a bundle of necessities" is generally full time work. I thought we were working like dogs and literally killing ourselves and the planet to consume things we don't even need. But now you're telling me that in fact it's impossible to work a little less and buy only the things we actually need in order to free up time. That's a little incoherent. OwlFancier posted:I'm literally a communist, I'm going to sound ideological occasionally. And itīs possible I'm being a little unfair in putting you on the spot, because any utopian ideology is going to have trouble addressing the mess that is reality and that's not exclusive to your version of communism. But you're also being a little unfair sniping at Capitalism and blaming it for all the many problems that relate to it having to function in the real world.
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Apr 2, 2019 19:01
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wateroverfire posted:I thought we were working like dogs and literally killing ourselves and the planet to consume things we don't even need. But now you're telling me that in fact it's impossible to work a little less and buy only the things we actually need in order to free up time. That's a little incoherent. If only there were some... place, or group of people, where a lot of... surplus value was going that could perhaps be... redistributed towards people who are required to work all day so that they could work less? Perhaps there is some big plughole in the economy where all the surplus value produced by labour is going and not doing anything useful and that's why people have to work all day to get paid just enough to continue working? Perhaps the hole is shaped like landlords, and CEOs, and F35s. wateroverfire posted:And itīs possible I'm being a little unfair in putting you on the spot, because any utopian ideology is going to have trouble addressing the mess that is reality and that's not exclusive to your version of communism. But you're also being a little unfair sniping at Capitalism and blaming it for all the many problems that relate to it having to function in the real world. I am suggesting that what you call "the real world" is capitalism. My suggestion is that capitalism causes its own problems and this is basically marx.txt This whole thing is really basic marxism and was being argued literally 150 years ago. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 19:11 on Apr 2, 2019 |
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Apr 2, 2019 19:07
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OwlFancier posted:I would suggest that virtually any suggestion you could come up with involving collective decision making would be better at figuring out what "need" is than "what can we sell to people". But the problem is you aren't just talking about regulating or banning commercial advertisements, rather, you are talking about banning consumption beyond survival-level consumption (which btw, almost certainly means posting on somethingawful forums is gonna be banned as a waste of electricity and bandwidth). Your economy sounds like a system of enforced poverty which I suspect appeals to almost nobody in real life.
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Apr 2, 2019 19:10
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Typo posted:But the problem is you aren't just talking about regulating or banning commercial advertisements, rather, you are talking about banning consumption beyond survival-level consumption (which btw, almost certainly means posting on somethingawful forums is gonna be banned as a waste of electricity and bandwidth). Your economy sounds like a system of enforced poverty which I suspect appeals to almost nobody in real life. I'm going to suggest that human productive capacity in tyool 2019, if organized towards providing the things I listed, homes, food, healthcare, security of life, to as many people as possible, it would actually be quite possible for us all to live quite pleasant lives, do a lot less environmental damage, and work a lot less. Or if all of those aren't possible, then we would still be doing a lot better on those fronts than we currently are. What we'd lose is millionares and billionaires, do you think this is a bad thing?
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Apr 2, 2019 19:13
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OwlFancier posted:I'm going to suggest that human productive capacity in tyool 2019, if organized towards providing the things I listed, homes, food, healthcare, security of life, to as many people as possible, it would actually be quite possible for us all to live quite pleasant lives, do a lot less environmental damage, and work a lot less. Or if all of those aren't possible, then we would still be doing a lot better on those fronts than we currently are. What we'd lose is millionares and billionaires, do you think this is a bad thing? yeah I'm sure the average person wants to live a sustenance level existence in where nobody ever gets a raise at their job (cuz that encourages more consumption) and poo poo like TV shows or christmas dinners gets banned as wasteful and unneeded and would be perfectly happy entertaining themselves by reading Marx every night
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Apr 2, 2019 19:16
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That's ignoring literally everything I just said.
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Apr 2, 2019 19:17
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OwlFancier posted:If only there were some... place, or group of people, where a lot of... surplus value was going that could perhaps be... redistributed towards people who are required to work all day so that they could work less? To borrow a phrase...capitalism is the worst form of economic arrangement except for all the others that have been tried, including communism.
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Apr 2, 2019 19:27
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OwlFancier posted:I'm going to suggest that human productive capacity in tyool 2019, if organized towards providing the things I listed, homes, food, healthcare, security of life, to as many people as possible, it would actually be quite possible for us all to live quite pleasant lives, do a lot less environmental damage, and work a lot less. Or if all of those aren't possible, then we would still be doing a lot better on those fronts than we currently are. What we'd lose is millionares and billionaires, do you think this is a bad thing? This is utopian idealism. Which is not bad, at all. Just not something that is actually possible.
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Apr 2, 2019 19:28
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OwlFancier posted:That's ignoring literally everything I just said. it's really difficult not interprete your posts so far any other way since nobody "needs" to watch netflix TV shows or "needs" to have big Christmas dinners, those things are probably going to be banned by w/e party committee responsible for limiting consumption as a waste of resources/environmental damage under your system
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Apr 2, 2019 19:33
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A great example of how capitalism provokes not-useful work is Google. The original Google search was not made with a money goal, it was made with a usefulness goal, and consequently was (and still is!) very useful. Since then, probably millions of highly trained person-hours have been expended in solely the advertising branch of the company. An activity which is below useless, actively detrimental to the desirability and functionality of the product itself. No user wants ads inflicted upon them. Capitalism (and its partner consumerism) strongly encourages this anti-productive work, and for the most part fails to encourage more of the actual productive, socially beneficial kind of work that originally launched the company. Now that Google is increasingly corporatized, every product has to be justified as "able to pay for itself", making people happier or more effective or more intelligent is no longer enough to 'sell' a new product. (Occasionally a product of that kind can be slipped through in the guise of "increasing user retention" or something, but it still has to be framed as exploitative not beneficial.) Contrary to the claims a few posts back, I don't think Netflix would be banned under a hard socialist regime; entertainment products are socially beneficial, it's the next tier of socially beneficial things once everyone's basic survival and comfort needs are already met.
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Apr 3, 2019 01:49
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Traditionally in hard socialist regimes, you're lucky if your car is worth $10 a month. Forget about netflix.
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Apr 3, 2019 03:36
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Volkerball posted:Traditionally in hard socialist regimes, you're lucky if your car is worth $10 a month. Forget about netflix.
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Apr 3, 2019 04:49
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wateroverfire posted:To borrow a phrase...capitalism is the worst form of economic arrangement except for all the others that have been tried, including communism. No, it isn't.
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Apr 3, 2019 07:40
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wateroverfire posted:This is utopian idealism. Which is not bad, at all. Just not something that is actually possible. Why is it utopian idealism to suggest that money and resources would and could be better organized towards making more people better off rather than making very few people obscenely rich? Again, you are assuming capitalism is some sort of immutable state of nature rather than a relatively recent invention.
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Apr 3, 2019 10:06
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OwlFancier posted:Why is it utopian idealism to suggest that money and resources would and could be better organized towards making more people better off rather than making very few people obscenely rich? Again, you are assuming capitalism is some sort of immutable state of nature rather than a relatively recent invention. It's utopian idealism to lay all the ills of the world at the feet of capitalism and assert that Communism will just solve those problems. It is utopian idealism to assert that people could be happy with much less stuff and therefore we don't need a society focused on producing stuff except the stuff that people "need". Those ideas are utopian because as soon as they come into contact with reality they become extremely messy and end up subject to all the same problems plus additional ones. For example - any regime in history that has claimed Communism as its organizing principle. One could say "well, that wasn't real Communism..." and one might be right. But one would be right because real communism is a utopian fantasy that doesn't survive implementation. Not because it just hasn't been done right yet.
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Apr 3, 2019 12:47
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I am suggesting that very specific problems related to the capitalist mode of production are problems with capitalism, and that if you want to solve them you need something that isn't capitalism. That capitalism is inherently incapable of solving them because they are problems with the nature of capitalism. That socialism as an alternative to capitalism is difficult to do does not change this.
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Apr 3, 2019 12:52
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wateroverfire posted:This is utopian idealism. Which is not bad, at all. Just not something that is actually possible. Better Things Aren't Possible so why even try? gently caress off with this  poo poo, if you're going to write off the entire concept of trying to get to a better world because you can't conceive of how it's possble to get there.Like what further conversation is there to have if you shut down your thought process here?
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Apr 3, 2019 12:58
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Put it this way, if you want to keep capitalism then you need to make a financial incentive to not kill the planet. If your criticism of socialism is that it's economically unsustainable, how do you plan to deal with paying people more to produce less or endlessly subsidizing eco friendly forms of production? Where is that money going to come from? What are you going to do when it also is sitting in the bank accounts of the richest hundred people on the planet? Because capitalism can not abide a contraction of production or profit, nor can it abide doing away with that concentration of wealth. Compared to that, how is democratic control of the means of production the pipe dream?
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Apr 3, 2019 13:14
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WampaLord posted:Better Things Aren't Possible so why even try? This is a forum discussion and I'm in no position to make policy or advise anyone who makes policy. Or even advise anyone who advises anyone on policy. So for me it's fine to talk about these things with some emotional distance and if a particular idea doesn't seem like it's workable, that's ok. IMO itīs even more important for people who have actual power to be able to do that, come to think of it. Further, I donīt think Communism is a means to get to a better world. I think it's a utopian idea and trying to impose it on the world is probably a dangerous mistake. So I guess yeah, Iīm going to write it off, and would consider other ways to make the world better that have a better chance of actually working. OwlFancier posted:Put it this way, if you want to keep capitalism then you need to make a financial incentive to not kill the planet. There are all sorts of ways that we are, right now, unde capitalism, trying to tackle preserving the planet. Just off the top of my head... 1. Emission controls, both explicit and in cap-and-trade type schemes. 2. Mandated scrubber technology, controls on where waste can be disposed of and how, and things like that. 3. Subsidizing renewable energy and setting targets for the growth of renewables. Those are all things that are happening right now, under capitalism. I'm sure there are many more. Those efforts are in many ways hampered, ironically, by democracy, in the sense that there isn't a dictatorial authority that can force (for instance) China and India to stop industrializing because emissions targets are more important than raising the living standards of like 2 billion people. And in the sense that voters in much of the first world don't want to give up their standard of living in order to consume less even if they support the idea of environmentalism in principal. And in many other ways having to do with people having different ideas of what priorities should be, who should sacrifice for them, and etc. The real world is messy and complicated. If your solution to that is "Well if we had global communism...", then yeah, that is a pipe dream.
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Apr 3, 2019 13:44
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I wonder if there is some sort of force in the world that encourages China to have such a gigantic industrial output and export economy.
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Apr 3, 2019 13:47
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wateroverfire posted:This is a forum discussion and I'm in no position to make policy or advise anyone who makes policy. Or even advise anyone who advises anyone on policy. So for me it's fine to talk about these things with some emotional distance and if a particular idea doesn't seem like it's workable, that's ok. IMO itīs even more important for people who have actual power to be able to do that, come to think of it.  heh, looks like you all care too much about being killed off to enrich the 1%, too bad you can't be rational about things like me The funny thing is that you're not actually talking about anything, you're literally just writing off the idea that we could transition away from capitalism as "utopian" when capitalism is literally boiling the planet alive. Replace all of your posts with "we can never change capitalism because I said so" and it's effectively the same thing. That's an inherently unproductive discussion. eta: seriously what is it about getting some money that turns everyone into a myopic idiot who thinks "well the system worked out for me therefore it's the best possible system we have, I'll just ignore every single downside because most of them don't affect me" WampaLord fucked around with this message at 13:51 on Apr 3, 2019 |
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Apr 3, 2019 13:47
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WampaLord posted:
Ok dude. I think I've said everything I can reasonably say and no new points seem to be coming up so I'm going to bow out.
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Apr 3, 2019 13:52
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The idea of holding up state regulations as the solution is kind of funny when all states participate in international capitalism so when the consumer market in one country is powered by destructive production in another, that's a problem with capitalism. That's capitalism bypassing regulation. Also when regulations are held back or defeated that definitely doesn't have anything to do with the power that capital holders hold in a capitalist democracy, where money buys votes either literally or by holding control of the supply of information.
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Apr 3, 2019 13:55
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wateroverfire posted:Ok dude. I think I've said everything I can reasonably say and no new points seem to be coming up so I'm going to bow out. If you're gonna start making arguments on a board called Debate and Discussion, maybe don't act so shocked when people argue that you're wrong? Saying "well this is just a forum we can't change anything here" as a tactic of stifling discussion because you'd rather not earnestly engage is some might lovely posting, dude. "Why bother discussing anything at all, since we can't change anything?" - a wise goon interested in good faith discussion.
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Apr 3, 2019 14:07
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Can we keep money? I know wealth is bad, but getting rid of money seems real loving dumb. People will just invent something else to be money.
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Apr 4, 2019 00:44
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Money doesn't necessarily make sense in all circumstances outside of a capitalist mode of production. If everything is not a commodity then not everything should really involve money.
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Apr 4, 2019 00:47
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OwlFancier posted:Why is it utopian idealism to suggest that money and resources would and could be better organized towards making more people better off rather than making very few people obscenely rich? Again, you are assuming capitalism is some sort of immutable state of nature rather than a relatively recent invention. How exactly does the Stalin slush fund guarantee a society in which everyone gets better off and not just a few? It's going to be subject to the same forces at play in the current capitalist system. Greed will exist with or without capitalism, and power will corrupt with or without capitalism. The only way to bypass these things if you have a belief in a sort of benevolent governance that could manage a fund like that in a way that ensures that 100% of the proceeds go towards the benefit of society. And if your end goal is a government with that as its central principle, then such a government could accomplish the same exact benefits through tax reform, enhanced welfare, social security, funding for secondary education, etc etc, regardless of what label they use for their economic system. I'm an Occam's razor man myself. Volkerball fucked around with this message at 04:22 on Apr 4, 2019 |
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Apr 4, 2019 03:54
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wateroverfire posted:Profit is an indicator that whatever enterprise you're involved in is running well enough to generate a surplus. If there's no profit then your enterprise has to pull resources generated from other enterprises to fund the thing it is doing. But then those enterprises have to be generating a surplus, and if they're not they have to pull from somewhere... and etc. Profit - or something analagous to profit - is going to exist as part of any successful economic system. If it doesn't, that system is ultimately going to collapse. Equating profit with social utility is quite a stretch, especially in an economy where profitability is typically achieved through market concentration and regulatory capture rather than free competition. In fact take away the elaborate system of contracts, subsidies and protections set up by the government and very little of the contemporary "capitalist" economy would survive in its current form. Let's use a typical suburban fast-food restaurant like McDonald's as an example: if you confine your analysis to a very narrow scope then you can argue that the fast-food franchise is an ultra-efficient operation that uses ruthless time management and automation to full effect. On the other hand this efficiency is entirely predicated on the maintenance of the heavily subsidized suburban lifestyle that emerged - thanks to massive government investments and conscious planning - after World War II. But the suburbs themselves are incredibly expensive to set up and maintain and often rely on very corrupt and inefficient relationships between local government and property developers. In essence the public purse gets raided to subsidize the construction of a highly inefficient and environmentally destructive form of land use. So within the most narrow of frameworks the McDonald's is highly efficient, but it is an efficiency predicated on the existence of a suburban mode of life that is highly environmentally destructive and requires substantial ongoing support from the government to remain sustainable. Supporting this lifestyle requires pulling a lot of resources from other parts of 'the system'. Indeed, American is more or less fighting an open ended global war and risking the ecosystem of the entire planet to maintain a world where McDonald's and other franchises like it can remain profitable. quote:How does one figure out what people need? The worst mechanism we have - except for all the others weīve tried - is a market economy. It's imperfect and it results in a lot of bullshit but it works better than central planning by a lot. A successful economic system is going to have markets or market analogs as well. You can't really get around it. I guess you could posit a world in which people are allocated a defined package of goods and services that it has been decided satisfy their needs? The economy is hardly a level playing field as it is and our market outcomes are impossible to separate from the elaborate regulation of our economy by the government. Besides which, even within the private sphere the "market economy" is mostly composed of competing corporations that are themselves privately planned economies that can rival national governments in terms of scope and complexity. There have been some occasions when a large company actually tried to run itself internally along free market principles and the results have been disastrous. wateroverfire posted:Nothing actually stops you from working as little as necessary to satisfy a set of arbitrarily curtailed material needs then using your time for those things if that's what you want to do? Like not to be personal about it but it seems like the problem is internal not external? People are social animals whose sense of well being is based on their social existence and their role within a larger group. The idea that you're free to go masturbate and eat grubs in the forest all day if you don't want to participate in capitalism is an extremely specious argument.
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Apr 4, 2019 14:33
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